Silk Vol 0: The Life and Times of Cindy Moon by Robbie Thompson and Stacey Lee

Silk Vol 0: The Life and Times of Cindy Moon by Robbie Thompson and Stacey Lee is the first ever collection of Silk comics. Like Spider-Gwen, Silk became a popular character during the Spider-Verse event and now has her own book, whoo. Also like Spider-Gwen, she was bitten by the same radioactive spider as Peter Parker, but unlike Spider-Gwen, she's from the main Marvel universe and the reason we haven't seen much of her up to now (well, and earlier in some Amazing Spider-Man comics) is because she was locked in a bunker for ten years. Isn't being a female superhero great?

Cindy Moon exploded out of her bunker and into the Marvel Universe when we first learned that she had been bitten by the same radioactive spider from the first arc of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. She then went on to save Peter Parker's life (more than once!) and traverse the Spider-Verse alongside Spider-Woman. Now, as SILK, Cindy is on her own in New York City, searching for her past, defining her own future, and webbing up wrong-doers along the way! Robbie Thompson (writer from TV's SUPERNATURAL) fills this new story with his unique blend of antics and feels. Featuring interiors by future superstar Stacey Lee.

Questionable origin story aside (and, I should say, this isn't an origin comic), The Life and Times of Cindy Moon is a really, really excellent comic. The art is nice and respectful (funny how you don't get gratuitous objectification with a female artist...) and the choice of colours is sort of subdued, making the comic look more serious and less "larger than life" than a lot of superhero comics tend to do. Not that there's anything wrong with brightly coloured superheroes, but this book tells a serious and relatively down-to-earth story, so it works really well.

Cindy's focus is in finding out what happened to her family after she went into the bunker. As far as she can tell, they seem to have disappeared. In the meantime, she's working as a reporter (a strangely common occupation for superheroes), getting her start writing stories about the new superhero Silk. As Silk, she spends her time fighting minor (for now) bad guys, with occasional help from her sidekick, Spider-Man (the Peter Parker one).


I didn't realise before I started reading, but I think Cindy might be the first female Asian-American superhero from Marvel? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I haven't read/seen any others. There are also a lot of Pokémon references, which is one way to get me on side. So that was pretty cool. I enjoyed spotting random Pokémon in the background of panels.


Overall, this was an excellent book. All seven issues formed a coherent story — which I always appreciate more than shorter story arcs — and even though the last issue was part of Last Days (the apocalypse immediately preceding the Secret Wars event), the story continued in a sensible manner and even managed to tie up a few loose ends before the inevitable post-event reboot. I just hope the post-Secret Wars continuation doesn't jump around too much. (I'm kind of hoping most of the comics I follow just ignore the whole Secret Wars thing as much as possible, really.)


Silk was an excellent read. Honestly one of my favourite comic books that I've read lately. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, especially compared with Spider-Gwen, who arrived on the scene at a similar time. Basically, Spider-Gwen has the cooler costume, but Silk is much better written. It's in my top 3 superhero comics. Recommended to all discerning comic book fans.


5 / 5 stars

First published: December 2015, Marvel
Series: Silk ongoing series (I suppose the post-Secret Wars numbering will start at Vol 1 since this is 0), issues #1–7
Format read: Trade paperback
Source: Bought from a real life bookshop, I think